


tuesdays with darlene

by lunchables



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, F/F, No Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:27:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24070591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunchables/pseuds/lunchables
Summary: “I’m the first face you saw after turning down a marriage proposal? That’s gotta count for something.”That same defensive sense of preservation crept back up Dom’s neck. “Yeah, I guess you’re just symbolic of the end, then.”“The end? Babe, give me some more credit than that.”“Then what?”“Maybe I’m your beginning.”a bartender au
Relationships: Darlene Alderson/Dominique DiPierro
Comments: 11
Kudos: 46





	1. you almost make me want to fall in love

**Author's Note:**

> i saw the amount of domlene fics on here and so this is my humble contribution, i hope it can measure up to the great works here so far 
> 
> this takes place around the time where dom finished law school and hasn’t yet decided to become an agent, and we’re gonna pretend darlene is closer to dom’s age and not an adolescent here
> 
> safe travels ahead and thank you for having me x
> 
> song: almost - sad alex

Yeah, Dom knows she shouldn’t be kissing the bartender.

You don’t kiss the bartender. Not if you want to come back. 

The way she’s boyishly groping said bartender’s narrow hips, the addictive press of hands on pale skin — yeah, that really shouldn’t be happening either. The whimpering exhales that steam from her throat like hot, wet vapor is also another no-go. And, oh, Christ, Dom has got to get her to stop palming her ass like that because if she has _one_ weakness it’s that _fucking_ — 

Okay.

Okay, so basically, Dom should just not be inhaling Darlene’s tequila-soaked lips with such a gasping tongue. Or any tongue. No one asked for tongue, or for Dom to suck on Darlene’s tongue like a damn lollipop. Really, no tongue. It’s that simple.

And this is an Applebee’s public restroom, for god’s sake. The Staten Island moms probably take their kids here on their weekends off.

The thing is, Dom doesn’t even know when it started, how they got here, and that’s even when she rewinds it all back to the beginning of whatever this bullshit is. Like, three months ago when she realized that she had something of a tradition with one stupid, overpriced dive bar.

Well, fine, with Darlene, really.

But Dom wouldn’t call it a _tradition_. That’s too formal, too heavy, gives everyone involved too much credit. 

It honestly just became an unconscious habit. Maybe bordered on deliberate, if she was gonna be generous about it, but that went against everything Dom had ever been. 

Before Dom ever knew this ridiculous bartender at all, the “tradition” was just a weekly Tuesday night dinner at a chain restaurant on St. Marks Place when her girlfriend finished her shift. Every Tuesday night, Dom finished her night lecture at nine, the girlfriend clocked out at ten, and they’d be in a booth by quarter-past.

It was three weeks before Commencement. But then, this same woman that Dom had been sleeping next to nearly every night for the past three and a half years, she had thought it was time to pull out an emerald stone set in a silver band in the middle of Washington Square. She’d smiled like a constellation, looked at Dom like she was her shower. Dom didn’t know how to explain that it was over before it started. A crowd had gathered, people holding up phones for a romantic New York City love story. And, in a tone that was apparently not low enough, Dom had said, _this is a joke, right?_

She threw her Jamba Juice smoothie in Dom’s face two minutes later. 

There weren’t a lot of places to go when there was an electric blueberry lemonade dripping down her chin, plastering her curls to the sides of her face like dried blood, not when she lived a fifty-minute subway ride away into Harlem. Even if it wasn’t such a trek, the girl had stormed off in the direction of the west fourth station, undoubtedly heading back to a home Dom had a feeling she was no longer welcome in.

So, the thing is, it was a Tuesday night.

It was just college bars near where they were, the girlfriend having thought it nostalgic and romantic to center it in the campus of where they’d met, both in their first years of law school, under the great white arch. Yet, walking down Waverly Place, wearing a twenty-dollar blazer from K-Mart, walking behind a group of undergrads laughing and drunk off the night, Dom just felt old.

The girlfriend — or, the ex, Dom figured she was now — didn’t like to go out drinking much. She barely drank at all, not anything more than a glass of merlot before bed three nights a week after having read on Facebook that it helped with weight loss. Dom used to be the type who frequented her local bar so often that she half-expected the government to ask her to report her hours there on her taxes. She used to be someone who the bartender would wave at as she breezed through the heavyset, rickety door after a long day of pouring over case dockets in the library, the kind of person who would slip into a barstool just as a foamy pint of the seasonal IPA draft was placed in front of her, the kind of person that even the other regulars had started to recognize. It was like an elite social group, the acknowledging nod, and the only admittance fee to qualify for spending five nights a week in the same dingy bar was reaching a certain tier of loneliness.

The Ex didn’t like bars. Said there was never enough artwork, whatever that meant. She also had a rich circle of friends, not much need for solitude and dive bars, places to hide in plain sight.

Dom had crossed Broadway, turned onto Astor, and was just before the Starbucks on Lafayette when she found herself longing for a drink, realizing she could actually get one now. She had this thought just as a bar came up on her left, tucked into a narrow store-front, behind glowing pink, frosted windows, and Dom, with a purple, strangely sour smoothie crusting along her jawline, stopped just outside its door. She’d been wondering whether she’d be able to keep the apartment or the ex would, but it then faded to the faraway lapse of her thoughts as she took in the strangely familiar, retro aesthetic. It reminded Dom of something she couldn’t put her finger on. She didn’t recognize it either. It had to be new, and oh, how Dom had grown nauseous of routine. 

So, with an intoxicating craving on her tongue as prominent as thirst, she stopped.

A downtown bar in New York City wasn’t the worst place to go in a condition like this, all things considered. She was both the rejected and the rejecter, whatever, it didn’t matter. The point was that the familiar cloak of loneliness had already come back across her shoulders like an old friend, and there wasn’t anywhere else to go. No, if anything, this city was built on an undercurrent of thrumming chaos. Its fuel was disorder, and without aimless, unbelonging people like her scattered about, it wouldn’t survive.

Yeah, that’d help her sleep at night. Being a hot wreck in a public college bar was only upkeeping her duty to the greater good of balance.

It wasn’t crowded, not anything more she’d expect from a Tuesday night. Low ceilings, glowing red neon lights behind the bar masking almost everyone into just two-dimensional silhouettes, and early 2000’s pop music crackling like static through the thick air. It was exactly where Dom wanted to be. It was nowhere.

She picked out a spot in the corner, close to the door, and made the mistake of running her hands over her face. Flecks of dried smoothie peeled off at the touch, stuck to her hands, and Dom raked them back frustratedly through her stiff hair instead. 

There were two bartenders behind the bar, a blonde and a brunette, the former tapping into a computer screen, laughing at something the latter was saying. The other was slumped back against the counter behind her, languid and lazy like she hadn’t moved all night, and her dark, thick hair hung loosely down her back in a mess of curls, leaving her pale shoulders and neck exposed, glowing under the cranberry lights.

She turned and caught Dom’s stare. 

Dom should have known then and there, at the wicked smile that spread across this woman’s face as if they knew each other, like she’d been waiting for her — Dom should have known this wasn’t just another place to wallow in lonely nights. 

But maybe everything just seems so much clearer in retrospect.

“Don’t you look like you’ve had a fun night.” The brunette propped her elbows onto the bar between them, her voice a low drawl, enunciated and clear despite the music, and made a vague gesture to the mess coating Dom’s face. “Hope you’ve got something exciting for me.”

Exciting. Right. Dom couldn’t be more of a stranger to a word like that. 

She liked her beer cold and hoppy, and that was about as far as she went at having strong preferences about anything. Christ, even her taste in porn was boring and stale. No, this was all she wanted, just a crisp, cold ale to soothe the parched heat at the back of her throat, just a drink to forget she had nothing outside of here, and an isolated place to wonder if she ever really did.

“A smoothie,” Dom found herself blurting instead, nothing that sounded remotely like _sixpoint bengali IPA, please._ At the bartender’s raised eyebrows, she cleared her throat, brushed away a strand of her crusted hair. “It’s… it’s just a smoothie. Trust me, there was nothing fun about it.”

This seemed to only make her smile widen, and the corners of her eyes crinkled slightly. “You know what?” She wagged her finger. “Let me make you something special.”

“Special,” Dom repeated.

She lifted a single eyebrow, her teeth grazed over her bottom lip. “Do you trust me?”

“I, uh, I don’t know anything about you.”

“Okay, killjoy.” She rolled her eyes, already backing away with a bounce to her step. “After this drink, maybe you’ll get a shot to.”

Dom at least tried to look somewhere else, to watch the other blonde bartender pull her phone from her back pocket and squint at the screen, to watch the young couple circling a narrow pool table in the back corner. But her eyes kept dragging back to the shorter brunette, the one whose hands were skimming over the liquor bottles and juices in her bar-well. Dom’s gaze pulled like an elastic band as she watched the rhythm of her fingers dancing around the bottles, fishing into her ice bin, the gentle flex of her forearm when she scooped a handful of ice into a cocktail shaker. Her mannerisms were sleek and mesmerizing, like a magician with playing cards thumbing them to her own will and demand.

If she looked up to her face, Dom would see the woman was biting the tip of her tongue as she mixed the drink, but Dom wouldn’t start catching up on how she always did that when she was mixing until next month, and it would become the most endearing thing Dom learned about her that week.

When the girl returned with a cloudy cocktail in a martini glass, maybe blue but it was hard to tell in the crimson light, and the liquid sloshed over the rim a bit as she set it down. Dom watched as she swiped away the spill on the stem, how she quickly licked the drop from her thumb. Dom knew this was when she should be worried about this place’s sanitation regulations, but she just stared at the girl’s wet bottom lip.

She should mention that they hadn’t had sex in nearly two months. Her and The Ex. It’d been two months, and Dom finds herself staring at a bartender’s rich mouth more pointedly than she should be. Jesus, she used to be smoother than this. 

“Go on. Have a taste, see how I can blow your mind.” She waved at the drink, dropping her hands to her hips. Her fingers rode up the hem of her tank top slightly, touched the bare skin above the low waistline of her jeans. 

Dom blinked. Shaking her head ever so slightly, she lifted the glass to her mouth. Although the potent, candy-like sweetness that immediately soaked over her tongue was something that Dom usually liked in a cocktail, there was another pungent bite to it that made her nose curl. “Oh, Jesus, is this tequila?”

“Mhm. I call it Envy.”

“What, because it wishes it tasted better?” Dom grimaced as she set the drink back down. “Sorry, I’ll just have whatever IPA you have on draft.”

“No, actually.” The girl laughed, a louder, richer thing than Dom’s stale joke deserved. She picked up a pint glass from behind her before tucking it under a tap. “I call it that because I’m usually making it for people I wished I was having a drink with rather than being stuck back here. What can I say?” She set the fresh beer down in front of her, the foam sloshing over the edge again, and shrugged as she picked up Dom’s discarded drink. “I’m the jealous type. Cheers.”

When the girl held out the martini glass, waiting, Dom was sure she was kidding. She did feel a little bad, rejecting whatever monstrosity that drink was, and so, yeah, she could humor her. She tapped her beer against the glass, but before she could even take a sip, the bartender was tipping the martini up, tilting her head back, and exposing a long, slender neck that bobbed in the neon red glow as she swiftly downed the entire thing.

Dom stared at her. 

The girl's grin was ever illuminant, unwavering, sinister. She wiped her chin with the back of her hand, smacking her wet lips together, and when she looked at Dom with a tilted, amused look, Dom felt as if she was seeing something she had no business in seeing.

“I’m Darlene, by the way. Not that you asked.” She nodded at the beer, already backing away again. “Let me know if you need anything else, Smoothie Girl.”

Darlene didn’t come back anytime in the next twenty minutes, and at some point Dom lost sight of her. She’d either left for the night or gone to the bathroom, but either way, Dom took the chance to close out with the blonde instead, some inclination flickering in her to make her escape now She finished the last dregs of her beer in a hearty gulp, cleared her throat, and left the bar as quickly as she’d come.

It was as close to a beginning as anything.

✕

The Ex kept the apartment.

And so, with an unplugged Alexa and two duffels of her clothes, Dom appeared before her mother’s house. The Ex said she’d mail the rest.

Yeah. It didn’t take long before Dom was reluctant to go home even after a long day at the library studying for her last two exams, no matter how many hours it’d been in the dark stacks of the library. She started coming up with excuses to stall returning to coastline suburbia more quickly and easily than there were bars in the city. 

In the following days, she started small, familiar. Tried some higher-collar bars with sixteen dollar gin and tonics near Port Authority, just before taking the 167 back to Jersey. She wandered into a few places over the river that she used to go to when she was younger, wondering if any of it might remind her of older days. Sometimes she ventured south into Tribeca, found tiny closets of a bar to squeeze into, pretended it didn’t smell like dust and day-old chicken wings.

By the next Tuesday, she was back at Mr. Robot. 

Dom didn’t mean to go back, and she still didn’t really understand what she was going back for. It was in the opposite direction of the subway she’d take to Penn station, and going to the East Village was always far more crowded and expensive than anything should be. There were places closer to her route home, and certainly cheaper ones at that.

So, no. She didn’t have a rationale for it, and, if asked, she wouldn’t know if she’d even pretend she did.

Her gaze instinctually sought out the bartender from the first night, Darlene. She was sat up on the back counter behind the bar when Dom walked in, legs dangling, talking to the same blonde who was wiping down the near-empty bartop. A smile had rounded the tail-end of her words to the blonde when their eyes met.

Aside from the two people who sat at the bar, huddled close together in quiet conversation, the place was empty. An old N’Sync played on the speakers, so low a bass that it almost sounded broken, but clear in the quiet bar.

“Hey, I remember you. Smoothie Girl, wasn’t it?” Darlene said as Dom sat down closer to the middle of the bar, dropping her purse on the lacquered wood.

“Health inspection hasn’t shut you down yet?” 

“And thank god for that, ‘cause how would I ever have seen you again?” Darlene leaned forward on her elbows, and less space separated them at this spot on the bar. A faint spray of freckles dusted high on her cheeks and nose, almost unnoticeable in the red light and underneath the cake of smudged eyeliner under her eyes. A wicked face, a low inviting tone, she reminded Dom of a siren. 

“But, to be fair.” Darlene dipped her chin. “There’s still time. Could come in any day now, what with the mold in the ice machine and everything.”

 _“Darlene.”_ The blonde hissed from down at the end of the bar, shooting her a sharp look. “Stop telling people that. That was months ago.”

“What? You know I can’t lie to a pretty face.”

“She didn’t even _ask.”_

Dom looked between them both with a blank stare. She remembers thinking that maybe this wasn’t a place she should be coming back to.

“Anyway.” Darlene lolled her head back to Dom, the neon red lights framing her in a sinister silhouette. “What can I get for you? Please have something creative for me, I might blow my brains out if I don’t find something to do soon.”

A boldness unlike her came out. “What, I’m not exciting enough for you?”

Darlene’s eye trailed over her. “Not dressed like this, you’re not.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

Darlene’s brow knit together bemusedly. “You look like you’re about to help an old lady cross a street right before doing her taxes. Pearls, really?”

Dom resisted the urge to touch at said necklace. She had an interview with a paralegal that afternoon, had dressed the part. “Do you talk to all of your customers like that?”

“Hey, not a customer. You are a guest in my abode.” 

It was just a joke, obviously, but the clarification still stirred something in her.

“Right.” Dom’s eye dropped to Darlene’s hands, the slender fingers with chipped black nail polish, drumming against the wood. She looked back up. “I’ll just take an IPA.”

“You’re breaking my heart, Smoothie Girl.”

“Sorry.” Dom remembers explicitly thinking that she wasn’t sorry, an echo in her head.

Darlene’s eyes had narrowed, the corner of her mouth twisted. “No you’re not.”

This was when Dom knew she’d be back, whether she wanted to or not.

Darlene soon dropped off the beer, wordlessly this time, and retreated back to the end of the bar where the two lone men sat. The blonde stood also down there, again on her phone, and Darlene joined their conversation fluidly as if she’d been standing there all night. 

Alone, it started to sink in why she’d come here. Darlene actually spoke to her. Everywhere else, the disinterest was fucking palpable. She’d get approached by some faceless stranger here and there, and it was always a man, but even if it was a woman Dom would still have been left with the same vacant melancholy. It’s not that she wanted to be _cared_ for, no, look how well that turned out before, she’d been cared for so much it just drove her into a void of apathy, made her want to run far and long. 

But, Darlene? She was just so clearly looking for _nothing._

She didn’t ignore her, but she didn’t ask for anything, didn’t bother with any half-assed _how are you’_ s. She wasn’t trying to take her home, wasn’t trying to ask Dom what she did for a living or how her night had been so far. She looked at Dom like she already knew her, and so there was nothing to claim from her, and nothing to pretend to be. She didn’t give a shit about Dom, and at the same time was still interested in her. Enough to not leave her alone, at least. It wasn’t the breaking point, the end of it. She didn’t care about Dom, and that’s where it started.

Dom failed to consider that Darlene just talked to her because that was literally her job.

And so with only the cloudy, unfiltered ale that glowed like embers in the light to hold her attention, and only her thoughts to listen to, Dom found Mr. Robot far less distracting than she needed it to be. 

What did she even need distracting from? Dom’s not sure she remembers, even now. 

She had avoided looking at Darlene, resisted the pull. The realization that she’d come here just for some aimless attention from a pretty bartender was more than juvenile, embarrassing like a raw itch. She wasn’t about to be caught staring. 

Not much time later, a shot glass was dropped in front of her.

Darlene stood in front of her, holding another two shots in her own hands, and nodded down at the one on the bar impatiently. “Come on, quick before they come back.”

“They?”

Darlene jerked another nod to the end of the bar she’d come from, and the two men from before were gone. “My brother and his boyfriend. He gets testy when I drink the product, and I really can’t do the rest of this night sober.”

The blonde quickly followed, appearing at Darlene’s side as she tucked her hair behind her ears. “Okay, I sent them to get us Twizzlers, but I don’t know if the bodega’s even still open, so they won’t be long..”

Darlene passed her one of the shots. “It’s barely nine, of course it’s open.”

“It’s half past eleven.”

“Fuck, you serious? Okay, let’s move it ladies, come on.” Darlene waved her hand again, holding out her shot, and the blonde reached out first. 

They spoke at the same time. “Ass.” They clinked their shots twice. First the bottom of their small glasses tapped together, and then they tilted for the top edge. “Titties.” 

Darlene repeated the action to a motionless Dom — “Ass, titties.” — her hand frozen in the air, but the blonde was already throwing hers back. 

Darlene held Dom’s eye, still, as she waited for Dom to raise the shot to her lips first, ensuring a unison. It was familiar, it echoed, it was new, Dom craved it.

“This better not be tequila,” was all Dom said.

“Aw, I thought we talked about trusting me.”

The blonde grimaced, lifted the collar of her shirt to wipe her mouth. “You can’t be trusted for shit.”

Darlene ignored her, locked with Dom’s eye. Her eyebrow arched, and Dom was the first to take the drink.

It was tequila. She sputtered, coughed. “Oh, fuck you.”

Darlene laughed as she held out a lime slice between her index and middle finger, and Dom took it gratefully, biting down into the sour fruit immediately. 

The two men returned, the shorter of the two sliding a bag of the red vine candy to the blonde. Before Darlene left again to go talk to them, she gave Dom a curious look, contemplative. Dom met it evenly, unsure what Darlene was looking for, what she saw, what Dom should be hiding close to her chest.

“Let me know if you need anything else.” She said it like this was already their routine, like this wasn’t only the second time Dom had been here. Or maybe the shot was just getting to her head already. Darlene tapped her hand against the bar, backing away slowly. “Smoothie Girl.”

Darlene dropped her tab not much later. The shot wasn’t included. Dom thumbed through her wallet, dropped a twenty on the small receipt. 

“Dom,” she said, just as Darlene scooped up the bill. “My name’s Dom.” 

She looked up, as if surprised that Dom had given her the name at all. Which, Dom supposed she was too. It was a promise that she’d be back.

“Nah.” Darlene’s grin stretched like a comet. “You’ll always be Smoothie Girl to me.”

✕

She was back the next Tuesday. Of course. That goes without saying.

She came earlier in the night this time, barely even six, having grown bored of the texts she’d been skimming over for hours. She had one exam left, not until Friday, but she’d been checked out for months now anyway, if not longer. Thinking about it was just another void Dom couldn’t look in the eye, another embodiment of how she didn’t know what the fuck she was doing anymore.

“Smoothie Girl,” Darlene called out. She craned her neck over the shoulder of the blonde to catch her gaze, shrugging on a fur-trimmed coat. “Perfect, you’re just on time.” 

Dom trailed to a slow, wary stop in the middle of the near-empty bar. She wondered how this place stayed open, for how little business they managed. “On time for what?”

“Angela, this place had better come fucking _alive_ while I’m gone, and I mean I wanna see Elliot taking bumps off the bar when I get back.” Darlene smacked her hand on the bartop before she broke away, now making for Dom. She greeted her with a cheeky smile and looped an arm through Dom’s. “Hey, you. We’re going shopping.”

“We?”

“You ask a lot of questions. Don’t question things, just try and drift with it.”

“Drift?” Dom clears her throat as she was led back into the cool night of the late spring. “Drift,” she repeated, taking the question out of it. “Right.”

“Mm, good. Fast learners are hot.” Darlene squeezed her arm, pressing tight to Dom’s side only briefly before she lets her go entirely and skips ahead on the sidewalk. “We’ve got a big night ahead of us.”

For someone who spoke pretty much exclusively in riddles, it was a wonder how Darlene thought they could go very long without Dom asking questions. “Yeah. You’re expecting a lot from me.”

Darlene turned around, walking backwards, the streetlights dancing on her hair and shoulders like starlight. Her nose scrunched cutely, her tone mocking. “Am I now? Do tell.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“Mm, and you said that last time. Or maybe it was the time before that. See? Look at how much time we’ve already spent together. And I haven’t killed you yet, have I?”

“Yet.”

She slowed to a stop, just before an intersection. That infernal smile. “Who are you, then?”

Dom raised her eyebrows. “Sorry?”

Darlene didn’t repeat her question, didn’t clarify it either. “I’ll know you soon, Smoothie Girl.” She wagged a finger, a twinkle in her eye. “Worry not. I’m gonna know you soon enough.”

Dom snorted. “Good luck with that. I don’t even know myself.” It slipped before she could stop it, the pathetic self-deprecation, she bit down on the inside of her cheek.

Rather than pity, the look that Darlene gave her was just another wash of intrigue, curiosity. 

“You’d totally get on with my brother,” she said, crossing the few steps back to Dom, and she looped her arm back through hers before urging them across the street. “He’s sort of a gloomy freak, too.”

Dom stiffened but didn’t pull away. “Thanks,” she said, flat. “Where are we going?”

“Questions, questions. I’m begging you for just an ounce of trust.”

“You’ve let me down every time you’ve said that.”

Another rich laugh, like the sparks of a fire. “It’s not my fault you have shitty taste.”

“I just don’t like tequila. Sue me.”

Darlene gave a quiet _tsk,_ her tongue poking between her teeth. “The only people who hate tequila are the ones who haven’t treated her right. You can’t fuck her and not expect to get fucked back. You wouldn’t skip the foreplay and go straight to three-knuckles deep, would you? No, you’d have the common sense to go down on me first.”

Dom didn’t have much to say to that.

When they crossed onto St. Marks, Dom’s stomach rolled over, a nervous apprehension. She couldn’t imagine what the hell Darlene would be shopping for here, given that it was a short street, only four blocks long, and the only things it was known for were overpriced restaurants, late-hour bars, and high schoolers smoking skunk weed on concrete steps.

And maybe a certain someone that Dom really had no interest in seeing.

But, no. However short the street was, the chances that Darlene would be leading them to the exact same place that she worked at was ridiculously—

Yeah. She spoke too soon.

Coming up to second avenue, Darlene’s eyes lit up at the red and blue neon sign ahead, and she pushed them along more quickly. Dom was still holding out hope that she was mistaken, but once they were just outside the restaurant, she immediately planted her feet and tugged out of Darlene’s grip.

“Okay, no, we’re not doing this.” Her voice was firm, didn’t sound anything like her. She shook her head. “No, I’m not— what are we doing here?”

Darlene naturally gave her a confused look, the amusement dulling. “What?” At Dom’s stone silence, she tilted her head, her smile crooked. “I just want a bite to eat first. C’mon, when’s the last time you had a ladies night?”

“I’m not hungry.” She was starving, but that was so not the point.

“Well, I am, and Angela’s not expecting me back for at least another hour, so, I’m not going back. Just come eat with me.”

A hot, defensive caution creeped up the back of her neck and overpowered whatever inexplicable pull she felt to be around Darlene. “Why?”

“We’re running low on limes, so I said I’d go get some.”

If they were anywhere else, Dom would probably ask why it’d take an hour to buy limes. She shook her head. “No, I mean, why do you even want me to come with you?”

She shrugged again, but it was smaller. “I don’t wanna go alone. You know how depressing it is to ask for a table for one? I’d rather sew my mouth shut and relive all my childhood traumas.”

Dom blinked. “Okay. So, why am I here? You… you don’t know anything _about_ me.”

There were two answers Dom expected, but hell if she knew which one was worse. One would be that Darlene just had no one else to go with and Dom happened to be there, the more likely of the two. The other reason would be that Darlene was… what, waiting for her? Or at least, happy to see her, and genuinely enjoying Dom’s company? No, that was a bullshit idea to even entertain. They’ve hardly had so much as three conversations in so many weeks, they weren’t _friends._

Both answers had cons that weighed a hell of a lot heavier than the pros, and Dom almost wished she hadn’t asked in the first place, like she’d violated some unspoken understanding between them that the real world didn’t exist outside of them. But standing in the street, seeing Darlene in the life of the city, that already was a violation in and of itself. She wasn’t just a bartender confined to a dark bar, she was now a person of the city. Her orbit was already bigger than Dom wanted her to be, had _meant_ for her to be.

Jesus, what was she doing here?

“It’s because you don’t know me, and you’re not about to pretend you do.” Darlene’s voice dipped to an annoyed edge, her tone droll. “Is it so goddamn crazy I just want to be around someone who’s not gonna give a shit if I’m special or not?”

Apparently there was a third type of answer, and of course, it was worse. The last thing she needed was to realize they had a thing or two in common after all. 

The hard set of Darlene’s jaw made Dom think she was seeing too much, glimpsing something private. Still, the vulnerability didn’t make Darlene cower. She didn’t reduce herself to her insecurities like Dom did, didn’t hide in them. She puffed her chest out with it, used it to stand taller, like a dare to let herself be defined by them.

She swallowed. Dom’s eyes flitted again to the restaurant sign, just a split glance. “There’s plenty of other places to eat.”

“Yeah, but Dallas BBQ has got these Texas-sized piña coladas, they’re fucking massive. And their shrimp cocktail is like, not even ten bucks.” Darlene, catching her glance, looked over her shoulder and up to the same sign, before back to Dom with a frown. “Why? What’s your beef with this place?”

“I thought you didn’t like questions.”

“Yeah, until you start being a freak about it.”

Dom pursed her lips, cocking her jaw. “My… ex works here, and I’m just not feeling super keen to see them. So, I’d rather go somewhere else.”

Darlene’s smile returned like it never left. “You can just say ‘her,’ you know. I clocked you as a muff-diver like three seconds after meeting you.”

Dom didn’t warrant that with a response..

“Was it recent?”

“Again, I thought you didn’t like questions.”

“Yeah, but this is juicy stuff.” Darlene stepped closer, eyes alight. “You should know, I’m a slut for gossip.”

Dom rolled her eyes, half convinced she’d never come back to Mr. Robot after all of this. “Yeah, okay. It was recent. So what.”

“Messy?”

Dom let out a bitter laugh. “Technically, yes. But, not in the way you’re thinking, no.”

Darlene raised her eyebrows, and her voice dropped with a teasing lilt. “And tell me, Smoothie Girl, what am I thinking?”

“It wasn’t… we didn’t have some big fight, or whatever. It just — ended.” She let out a quiet scoff. “You know, how it ended is exactly why you call me that.”

Darlene didn’t get it at first, but when it sunk in, she laughed sharply. “Fuck, you’re not serious, are you?”

“It’s not funny.” It was a little bit.

“She dumped that smoothie on you? Dude, what the hell did you do to her?”

Dom cleared her throat and glanced around, anywhere but Darlene’s intense gaze. “If we’re gonna use my failure of a love life as entertainment, you’re buying me a drink first.”

“Okay yes, totally, you’re gonna love their piña colada.”

“What, are you insane? Did you not hear a word I just said?”

“If I’m insane, what does that make you? Coming back every week to see little old me.”

Dom’s ensuing laugh was equal parts incredulous and nervous. “Don’t be ridiculous, no, I— No. I don’t come for you.”

“Sure you don’t.” With a wink, Darlene took her hand again, pulling her to the entrance. “So, you wanna split some crab cakes with me? Shit’s better than crack.”

Gritting her teeth, Dom didn’t pull her hand away this time, but she still didn’t budge, either. “I said no, and you’re really not in a place to bargain.”

Darlene tipped her head back with a loud groan. “Okay, so go home then, don’t come with me.”

Dom blinked at the sudden change, from the woman who just moments ago was insisting she didn’t want to be alone, and now was offering to say goodbye like it no longer made a difference. 

Catching Dom’s frown, Darlene’s laugh was wicked. “Come on, which is it then? What do you want more? To avoid an ex, or to grab a drink with me? It’s not every night that I’m free, you know.”

It was a stupid bluff she was calling Dom on, one that should’ve been a no-brainer to shut down. She should’ve turned around then, gone to grab transit back to Jersey or find some other stupid bar to hide out in. 

Her silence was an answer in itself, and Dom ignored Darlene’s smirk. “Really, this is a terrible idea. She doesn’t want to see me.”

“Trust me, a girl gets pissed enough to throw a drink at you, she wants to see you again. Just let me play your wing woman.”

“I don’t—” Dom sighed sharply, pressing her mouth into a flat line. “Maybe I don’t want to see her.”

“Okay, well, suck it up, ‘cause I do. I wanna see your type.”

“Why?”

“So I can see if it’s me.”

“You could just ask me.”

Darlene’s eyebrows arched, her lips spread into a saccharine smile. “Okay. Am I your type?”

Dom’s mouth parted open, but the words clung to the back of her throat like gum, and nothing emerged. She clamped her jaw shut. 

She didn’t know what the fuck her type was anyway. “One drink, twenty minutes, and then we’re leaving. You don’t talk to her, and I’m not introducing you.”

Dom pushed passed her for the door. She could practically hear the smug bounce to Darlene’s step as she skipped after her.

“Can we make it thirty? I’m fucking starving.”

At no point did Dom think this wasn’t a terrible idea. She should make that much clear. She was entirely aware this was something she’d regret by morning, and for every day to follow.

And, naturally, The Ex was the first face they saw. Standing behind a hostess stand, flat blonde hair, pale brown eyes, she just stared at Dom like watching a ghost drift through the doors.

Dom stared right back.

She flinched when Darlene’s fingers wrapped around her wrist, trailing over her palm, leaning close to her ear. “Can we sit at the bar? Booths give me hella camel toe.”

There was really nothing noteworthy about seeing her. Dom swallowed and led Darlene away from the dining room and towards the bar without a word, and The Ex didn’t follow.

Again, it all was over before it started.

“Okay, which one is she?” Darlene hopped up on one of the barstools and surveyed the area, her legs dangling a foot off the ground, swinging slightly in the air. It was more endearing than Dom wanted it to be. 

She almost didn’t hear the question, a soft smile pulling her mouth, and it wasn’t until Darlene turned to look at her and caught her staring that Dom shook herself out of it.

“Yeah, um.” She cleared her throat and gave a vague gesture over her shoulder. “Hostess at the door. We just walked past her.”

Darlene’s jaw dropped open in a sarcastically exaggerated form. “You’re joking. She didn’t say one fucking word to you.”

“I told you, she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Okay, you really have to tell me what you did for her to hate you so much.”

“And like I told you, you’ll have to buy me a drink first.”

Darlene was immediate in flagging the bartender down, completely uncaring at their grim annoyance with her snapping fingers.

When they both finally had a drink in front of them, Darlene with her piña colada, and Dom with some equivalent frozen drink that she’d been assured multiple times contained no tequila — only then did Dom at last release a sigh of defeat. “I said no.”

Darlene’s thick lips were twisted around a curly straw, almost too distracting for anything else. “Said no to what?”

Dom set her jaw in a stiff line and looked up to the TV screen showing the replay of a football game. “She proposed, and I said no.”

“Okay, and? Is that it?”

“Essentially.” 

“Huh.” Darlene sat back in her seat, pensive. “Did you keep the ring?”

Dom shot her an incredulous look. “I didn’t touch it.”

“Oh, so you were like, _that_ much of a no. You just knew right away?”

“I guess.” Dom nudged around her own straw with a shrug, sludging through the frozen drink. 

“Mm. I feel that, though. Douche I was dating proposed to me, too. Like, god, since when did people start thinking it was okay to grow some balls? Keep that shit to yourself.”

Dom stared at her.

“Oh, hold up, wait.” Darlene smacked her lips after a particularly long sip of her drink, hurrying to swallow it down. “So, does this mean you came to the bar right after you told her no?”

Dom didn’t like where this was going. “Yes,” she said tentatively, slowly.

“Okay, come on, that’s pretty fucking poetic, isn’t it?”

“Poetic?”

Jesus, Dom should’ve considered going back to church for how _sinful_ Darlene’s ensuing smile was. 

“I’m the first face you saw after turning down a marriage proposal? That’s gotta count for something.”

That same defensive sense of preservation crept back up Dom’s neck. “Yeah, I guess you’re just symbolic of the end, then.”

“The end? Babe, give me some more credit than that.”

“Then what?”

“Maybe I’m your beginning.” 

When Dom said nothing to that, just held the brunette’s stare like a challenge, Darlene still wasn’t put off by Dom’s stilted demeanor. 

“Really, just tell me. Who the fuck are you?”

Even as Darlene shot her a bewildered look, her lips pressed into a closed smile. It was less like the feral grin that Dom’s become so used to, less _performative._ This was an elsewhere smile. Her tone was soaked with wonder, amazement, Dom couldn’t remember the last time anyone was so fascinated with her. Even The Ex had only picked Dom for her stability, the reliable consistency, the ever unchanging pattern, she liked Dom exactly because she _wasn’t_ interesting.

Something about the wonder in her eyes was off-putting, made Dom’s skin crawl. She cleared her throat. “If you’re about to ask where I’ve been all your life, save your breath.”

“No, definitely not. I’m glad I’ve only just met you now.”

The statement dangled, and Dom couldn’t help herself, couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Why?”

“I think, if I’d met you any sooner… I dunno.” Darlene sat up straighter, a flicker of a somber expression passing over her face. “I think you probably would’ve been gone already. And I’m glad you’re here now.”

Again, she didn’t want to know, but. She asked again. “Why?”

Darlene laughed like her smile had never wavered. “Otherwise I’d never be privy to this juicy ass drama you’ve got going on.”

“I already told you everything. There’s nothing more to it.”

“How long were you two going down on each other for? Few months? A year? I know lesbians are a little speedy.”

“That is… such an inappropriate way to ask that.” Dom sighed. “You know, the reason I like you is because you don’t ask me about things that don’t matter. You shouldn’t start now.”

“Did she break your heart, or something?” Darlene went on like Dom hadn’t said a word, and Dom closed her eyes in frustration. “Or did she just never have it?”

Dom wished for something stronger than the drink in front of her, and she stared down at the cocktail umbrella. “Maybe my heart just isn’t something to be had.”

Darlene was quiet for a moment, a too long of a moment, one that made the same shadows creep around the back of Dom’s neck.

But, soon enough—

“Okay, yeah, fuck it, you’re right, this is all too fucking tender for my taste. Yo, Nickson,” she called out to the bartender as she smacked her hand down on the lacquered bar, craning her neck. “Grab us a round of shots, we’re depressed over here.”

Before Dom knew it, twenty minutes turned into fifty, and one drink became four.

“Shit,” she muttered, catching a glimpse of her phone. “We have to get you back, we shouldn’t have stayed so long.”

Darlene, one elbow slumped on the bar, and her entire body angled towards Dom like she’s the most fascinating thing in the room, merely arched an eyebrow in response. “You wanna start handling my schedule? Don’t worry about it.”

“We’ve been gone nearly an hour.” 

“Yeah, well, Angela’s used to it by now. Besides, you’ve seen our regular Tuesday night, she’s not gonna shit herself over a few beers.”

“Just to be clear, you leaving her hanging in the middle of a shift — that’s just a regular thing for you?”

Still, Darlene’s smile only widened. “Your concern job is adorable, but my job is safe. Trust me.”

“If you get fired, I’m not coming back.”

“So you admit you only come to see me?” At Dom’s stubborn silence, Darlene’s laugh was euphoric. “Babe, listen, I think owning my own bar keeps me pretty fucking safe from unemployment, so. Finish your drink with me, and stop wigging out.”

“I’m not… wigging.” Dom frowned. “Wait, you— you own the bar?”

“Okay, co-own with my brother, we inherited it, but that shithole would be dead in the ground without me. Take you, for example. Apparently if it wasn’t for me, we’d never have scored such _loyalty._ ”

“And you’re doing a really good job at driving me away.”

“What am I doing?” Darlene gave an incredulous, holding her hands up in innocence. “You can admit you’re having bomb ass time with me, you know, it won’t kill you.” The tip of her boot nudged against Dom’s ankle. “I’m more than fine to say that I am with you, anyway.”

Yeah, Dom thought. It probably would kill her. She knew all too well that a high like this never lasts.

“Fine,” Darlene sighed, hopping off the barstool to her feet. The jump to the floor only emphasized her shorter height, and Dom’s shoulders sagged as another soft feeling twinged in her chest. Darlene tugged out a few crumpled twenties from her back pocket and dropped them on the bar. “I’ll stop holding you hostage, then.”

Dom still had nothing to say. Came to her feet, tucked her hands awkwardly into the front pockets of jeans, felt the swaying wave of sugar and liquor come rushing to her head. She’d surely have a hangover in the morning if only for the amount of syrup in those drinks.

“I see the appeal, by the way, but you could do better,” Darlene said, her neck slightly craned to look up at Dom, drawing her attention to how close together they stood. 

Dom could smell the stale cigarette smoke that clung to her, but through it was still a headier smell, something rich and strangely sweet, like citrus. Dom didn’t look away, even despite Darlene’s intense stare. “What?”

“Like, she’s cute and all, but in an American Girl Doll kind of way. I just wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking at Miss Goldilocks either.”

“Oh.” Dom shook her head, rattling out her thoughts. “Right. You got me, I turned down a marriage proposal because her face is too conventional.”

“Look, you just deserve someone hotter than that, is all I’m saying.”

“Do you hear how shallow you sound?”

“I’m not saying she’s _bad_ looking or anything, I just mean you could do better. Someone you can get wet just looking at, you know?” Darlene tilted her head, and another smile lit up her face. “Someone like you.”

Darlene turned for the door, and there was a lag of at least ten seconds before Dom followed after her.

✕

It was the not knowing, the lack of details. It was how Darlene never asked where she worked, what she studied, where she lived, where she was from. It was the things that didn’t interest Darlene, the things they didn’t have time for. 

It was exactly how they knew almost nothing about each other, and yet Darlene felt so familiar, that was exactly what kept Dom coming back.

The next week, Darlene immediately came around the bar to sit beside her. She scooted her chair closer, put her back to Dom’s. “Give me a massage, will you? I’ve been lifting crates all day.”

Dom exchanged a look with the blonde behind the bar, Angela, who only rolled her eyes. 

“Um.”

“Come on.” Darlene shot a grin over her shoulder, innocence glittering in her eyes like rhinestones disguised as diamonds. “Do me and I’ll do you. Please?”

Without having to ask, Angela dropped her IPA in front of her. Dom polished off half of it before turning back to Darlene. 

She didn’t let Darlene give her one in return.

✕

The next Tuesday, Darlene spent most the night not looking at or speaking with Dom, nothing beyond an initial greeting when Dom first walked in the door. She stood at the opposite end of the bar with the same two men that were usually there, who Dom assumed to be the brother and boyfriend. She’d talk to them with her head tucked low, focused on something she was writing, or drawing, Dom couldn’t see from where she sat.

Angela was the one who handled her. She wasn’t as talkative as Darlene, far less eccentric, but her liquid demeanor and relaxed, half-mouth smiles were indifferent, comfortably distant. They didn’t really talk about anything, Angela was like Darlene in the regard that she never asked how Dom’s night had been so far, but she didn’t ask much of anything at all. They talked about beer, about local breweries one of them had been to but the other hadn’t. The only other thing was Darlene came up a few times, but Dom never had anything to say about her, just nodded along with Angela, too uncertain to make a committing statement of her own. 

Angela would say things like:

“Do me a favor, make sure next time she’s gone for an hour, she actually comes back with the limes. Came back totally empty handed, I was ready to _strangle_ her.”

Or: “Oh, yeah, Darlene mentioned you’re from Jersey. You ever been to Pete’s?””

Her most but simultaneously least favorite being: “Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen her work so many Tuesdays in a row before. She normally hates weeknights. Not that she actually _does_ anything when you’re here, she’s useless the second you come in the door, but—”

Dom didn’t know what to make of any of this. Half of her was shrouded with suspicion , the other half was too dumbfounded to articulate an exact reaction.

But by the time Darlene came back, bit over half an hour later, Dom was crawling less out of her skin with social anxiety as when the night had started. Angela wasn’t so difficult to be around And still, it all assuaged again more as Darlene leaned forward on the bar in front of her. She held out a square coaster between her middle and forefinger, her smile smug.

Dom knitted her brow, looking back and forth between the bartender’s hand and her eye. “What?” 

Darlene just waved the coaster, held it out closer.

Apprehensive, Dom took it. A Bud Light logo printed across one side, she flipped it over and found a crude portrait made with a blue Bic’s ballpoint pen. Dom turned it until it was upright. It was a woman sitting at a bar, a foamy beer in front of her, and—

“Is this me?” she asked, and tilted her head . “… smoking a… joint?”

Darlene nodded excitedly. “Yeah! You like?”

Angela peered over Darlene’s shoulder and, with a snort, shot Dom an amused look. “Don’t let her quit her day job.”

✕

“Why Tuesdays?”

Dom was long finished with the semester, and now had a law degree sitting on a cardboard box at her mom’s house somewhere. She’d started working as a paralegal’s assistant at a midsize firm in Newark during her nine-to-five hours. It wasn’t laziness that kept her from finding something better, it was just a matter of how deep into the water she wanted to tread. She still combed through LinkedIn and Indeed for associate attorney positions in the city, applied for a judicial clerkship as kind of an afterthought, and she had an interview for that in the coming week. 

So, that is to say, this had _started_ because Tuesday nights used to be the night she finished studying early enough to grab dinner with The Ex, and then it just became the easiest night to come to Mr. Robot. But once classes had ended, Dom refused to acknowledge how she now was doing something almost like going out of her way to upkeep this routine rather than coming out of convenience. 

Like, really out of her way. Taking the NJ transit from Newark to downtown Manhattan wasn’t a simple affair. 

This was absolutely not something she was about to tell Darlene.

“Oh, um.” Dom licked her lips, let out a nervous laugh. “It’s just, um, I prefer to come when it’s not crowded.”

Darlene’s eyes dropped down to where Dom’s hands twisted together. “We’re not busy most weeknights.”

Another weak laugh. “What, you want me to come more often, do you?”

“Yes.”

Dom needed to stop asking questions she didn’t want to hear the answer to. She pulled a long gulp from her beer, the swallow stretched uncomfortably down her throat.

“I’m busy,” was Dom’s grand, final answer.

✕

“What are you doing this weekend?”

Dom normally prided herself on her ability to conjure up excuses to get out of things, to avoid social engagements. It was a skill as innate as riding a bike, they came up quicker than she could even think about it. It was her party trick, how quickly she could ensure that she’d never be at the party at all.

She had a feeling Darlene knew this. Because her question, so conveniently worded, required Dom to come up with something that covered an entire three days. 

“I’m going home for the weekend,” she answered. 

Well, it wasn’t a lie.

Darlene tilted her head skeptically. “You’re from Jersey.”

“It’s kind of a long commute.” It wasn’t. She did it every day. 

“What part? I’ll pick you up”

Teaneck was hardly a half hour drive. Dom pursed her lips. “I promised my family I’d hang out with them.”

“Okay, you have a curfew or something? How late can Chutes and Ladders go ‘till anyway? Just come after.”

“Come to what?” Dom asked before she could think better of it.

“Friday.” That signature grin. “I’m having a thing.”

“A thing.”

“Yeah, Smoothie Girl, and I want you there.”

Darlene always had a way of wording things just _so,_ in such a _way_ that left Dom’s throat dry and her gut clenched, so innocently phrased but precisely chosen. 

She crossed her legs. “What is it?”

A pout pulled Darlene’s lips down, accentuated them, pulled at Dom’s gaze. “Why can’t you trust me for anything?”

“I only trust you to not poison my drink. Barely.”

“How sweet. But really, just have a little faith.”

“I don’t know you.”

Darlene huffed out an exaggerated sigh, slumping over the bar from her side and dropping her face down into her elbows. Angela and the brother looked over at the dramatic sound, and Dom awkwardly avoided their eyes.

“You’ve been coming here for like, two months now, and you’re still pulling that card,” she groaned loudly into the bartop.

“Can you—” Dom tapped at her forearm, just below a printed tattoo. “People are staring.”

“I don’t care,” Darlene mumbled into her arms. But still, she lifted her head, and she dropped her chin into her palm. “Really, how long’s it gonna take? Do I need to submit an application or something?”

“For what?”

“God, you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met.”

“Stop trying, then.”

“Yeah,” Darlene huffed, standing up, her hand falling flat to the bar. “You’re kinda starting to make me wonder if I should.”

Her tone was eighty degrees of sarcasm, but the implication stung sharper than Dom wanted it to. Whether out of guilt or anxiety, she had no idea, but the frustrated press of Darlene’s mouth was something Dom didn’t want to see.

Dom didn’t really have much to say for the rest of that night, and it seemed Darlene didn’t either.

When Dom closed out her tab, she flipped the receipt over, and scribbled something across the blank side. “Hey.” Darlene turned around just as Dom held the paper with her address written out. “No earlier than eleven, okay?”

Darlene’s slow smile was nothing like her signature, this was nothing wicked, and it shone like moonlight even under the glow of the red neon signs.

“Yes, ma’am.”


	2. we knew this wasn't built to last

Friday night, Dom was perched at the front window on the lookout by ten-thirty. No, she wasn’t interested in talking about it. She’d been sitting there for nearly half an hour already, undoubtedly looking like a fool, but she hadn’t given Darlene her number (an intentional forgetfulness on her part), and Dom was definitely not about to be caught off guard with a beaming Darlene at the front door like she was picking her up for the damn prom.

Trudy hovered beside her, peering out the window. “Which friend is it?”

“No one, Mom. Go up to bed.”

“What time will you be home? Should I leave the porchlight on for you?”

Dom clenched her jaw at the undertone, the teasing but unmistakably excited lilt. 

“Yes,” Dom said firmly. “I’ll be back tonight.”

“Mm, well, feel free to—”

Almost exactly on the turn of eleven, a white, beat-up civic swiveled into the driveway, and Dom had staggered off from the window bench before it’d even come to a full stop. Fuck if she felt like a teenager again, her shoes already laced on as she scooped her keys off the front hook before her mother could even finish a sentence, and it was  _ so _ not in a good way.

She pressed a hasty kiss to her mother’s cheek. “Don’t wait up for me.”

“Is that because you won’t be—”

When Dom shut the door and hopped down the front steps, Darlene was already halfway up the walkway, a pair of sunglasses pushing her hair back on top of her head. 

The yellow porch light was harsh on her pale skin, and she squinted as Dom hurried towards her. “What? Don’t I get a tour? Snack for the road?”

“Not a chance.”

“But—” 

Dom hooked a hand around Darlene’s elbow, tugging her towards the car. “Let’s go before I change my mind.”

Darlene stumbled after her, laughing. “C’mon, the place looks super cute. Can’t I at least meet the ‘rents?”

“You’re pushing your luck.”

“Okay, okay,” Darlene said, acquiescing. It wasn’t until Dom wove around to the passenger side and caught Darlene’s eye over the roof of the car that she finished her thought. “I know  _ exactly _ how lucky I am to have you as my date tonight.”

Dom froze, hand hovering above the door. “This… you know this isn’t a date, right?”

Darlene’s head disappeared as she ducked in the car, leaving Dom to frown, calculating. She bent over and knocked tentatively on the glass. “Darlene,” she said louder this time. “This isn’t a date.”

The window rolled down, and Darlene leaned across the console, a cigarette already dangling from her mouth. “Can you chill the fuck out for three seconds and just get in the car? I promise I won’t try to sleep with you tonight.”

Dom was acutely aware of the ever dangling  _ tonight _ tacked on to that statement.

They sat in near silence for the first ten minutes, just the rush of the wind and traffic outside Darlene’s open window as she finished her cigarette. As they approached New York again, Darlene flicked on the radio, and an upbeat 2000’s pop song Dom didn’t recognize crackled through the speakers.

Dom turned it down, the inability to hold in her antsy curiosity taking over. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t care how cute your ass is — touch my music again, and I  _ will _ leave you on the side of the road.”

“Darlene.”

Eyes secured ahead, one arm hanging on the wheel, Darlene let out a languid laugh. “You really make it sound like I’m about to take you to some miserable crackhead’s underground lair and cop all your bank passwords.”

Something along those lines had definitely crossed her mind.

“Please don’t make us succumb to the cliché where I’m finally forced to ask you when the last time was that you did anything fun,” Darlene continued.

“I don’t know what you do in your free time,” was Dom’s weak defense.

“Nothing you need to piss yourself over. We’re just going to my place.”

The notion of Darlene having a  _ place, _ some physical setting that she returned to each night, somewhere with a bed she slept in and a toothbrush she kept by the sink — it was a foreign idea to Dom. It was just hard to imagine that Darlene existed outside of the demonstrative light of the city, that she didn’t automatically flicker into being a figure on the street or a bartender serving drinks, that she was a person with a regular life of her own, that she didn’t snap out of existence the second Dom turned away. Darlene was entirely disconnected from the life Dom led and knew, and she was slowly coming to terms with how she fit into this grander dynamic, how Darlee was becoming a part of Dom’s  _ life. _

After crossing the bridge into Washington Heights, they soon crossed over again into Brooklyn, and all too soon Darlene was pulling onto the side of the road in Park Slope, outside a pale strip of five-storey buildings pressed close together, pressed so narrowly together like trying to squeeze a series of books on one shelf.

Darlene led her up a set of slanted concrete steps, the distant muffle of music audible even from the street. After a four-floor walk-up with only the high-bass rumble of music and muffled shouts between them, Darlene finally stopped them in front of a door, the dark paint shedding from it like skin. 

Just as Darlene slotted the key in, she looked back at Dom, eyes uncharacteristically soft. “Hey. Don’t overthink this.”

She took Dom’s hand as she pushed the door open.

There were too many people. This was Dom’s first thought, and with it came an immediate, staggering rush of anxiety like sharp sand pouring all over her skin, down her back and neck, weighing on her shoulders.

Darlene’s hand squeezed, like an anchor, like stone, before twisting to interlace their fingers together. Some of the sand brushed off.

Darlene led them first through a crowded hallway and around the edge of a living room. Plenty of people tried and snagged her attention on their way, greetings shouted to Darlene over the music, but she stopped for none of them, giving only quick acknowledging responses that Dom couldn’t make out.

When they made it into the kitchen, it wasn’t much better, but Darlene tugged Dom closer by the belt-loops of her jeans as they went behind a counter. Her hand was soft on Dom’s hip, grounding. Anywhere else Dom might feel sour for being kept like a dog on a leash, but here, she found herself hovering close to Darlene’s side, her own knuckles brushing against Darlene’s thigh, the smell of her Dove conditioner overmasking the liquor and beer. Darlene poked around the messy surface of bottles and cans, stepping up on her toes to get a better look. Plucking out two plastic cups first and then pouring thick dollops from a half-finished plastic bottle of vodka, she still didn’t let go of Dom’s belt loop. She palmed the two cups easily in one hand, nodding at Dom to take one.

Dom wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like shots.”

“I know,” Darlene shouted back, smiling through an eye-roll. With how loud the music was, and how amplified Darlene needed to project her voice in order to be heard, the breath of her voice lapped against Dom’s face hotly, and Dom could practically taste the Marlboros. It didn’t disgust her like it should have. “But it’s not tequila, so do it anyway.”

Darlene, as she tipped her own cup towards her mouth, squeezed Dom’s hand again, a beckoning that Dom couldn’t refuse even if she wanted to. 

The liquor burning down her throat, Dom at least had the stomach to school her expression into indifference. She wiped her mouth with the front of her wrist, whereas Darlene coughed, her face screwed up into a grimace. 

She scowled at Dom’s unexpected laugh and tugged Dom away once more. On their way out of the kitchen, Darlene scooped up a six-pack of Budweiser and led them down yet another hallway, revealing the apartment to tread deeper and wider than Dom originally thought.

“Do you live here alone?” Dom shouted over Darlene’s shoulder, but the brunette either didn’t hear or didn’t care to answer. 

Dom had her answer soon enough when Darlene pulled them both quickly into a room at the end of the hall, slamming the door. It was like bursting under water for how abruptly the noise and music muffled, and a coil of tension released from Dom’s shoulders.

They weren’t alone, but. It was better than nothing.

“Holy  _ shit.” _ Angela rolled off the mattress tucked into the corner of the floor, the green neck of a Heineken loose between her fingers. “No fucking way you’re here.”

“She is indeed, so — cough it up, babe.” Only now did Darlene let go of Dom’s hand, and she held it out to the blonde, who began to fish for something from her bra, grumbling. 

Glancing around the room awkwardly, Dom recognized the brother and boyfriend from the bar, one slumped in a sagging desk chair by the window, smoking a blunt, while the other was lounged on the mattress where Angela had been moments ago, tapping into his phone.

Dom’s eye flickered back to see Angela stuffing a crudely rolled joint into Darlene’s hand.

“She bet you wouldn’t actually show,” Darlene explained, turning to Dom smugly as she pulled a lighter from the pocket of her shorts. “Lucky for us, I’m just too irresistible. Care to do the honors?”

Dom stared at the joint held out to her, at the twist of Darlene’s wry smile, the shadows of her angled face in the low lighting cast through the window. 

The siren: temptation — consequences both fixed and unknown.

But Dom gave a slight shake of her head, forced a smile. “No, go ahead. It’s all yours.”

Darlene’s eyes narrowed, like a scope focusing right through her. Dom could do nothing but split open naked under a stare like that. 

Darlene turned to the man in the chair abruptly. “Leon.” She kicked his leg, and he hardly batted an eye, just tapped off the ash from his own blunt out the window.

“Sup, girl.”

“Move.”

Darlene’s mind jumped from moment to moment with the fluidity of an acrobat. Before Dom could register she was even  _ doing _ anything of note, Darlene had already tucked the joint behind her ear, picked back up the beer, and reclaimed Dom’s hand when she pulled her towards the window. Leon smoothly rolled his chair away from the desk and towards the door, his long legs dragging. As Darlene climbed out over the sill, Dom didn’t know what else to do but follow out onto the rusty fire escape that hung far above the ground.

It was only two flights before the distant, midnight city skyline broke over the building’s edge, an urban sunrise.

Darlene left the beers on the ground by the escape and skipped across the rooftop to the far western ledge, arms splayed through the night’s shadows like wings, and the echo of her laughter was starting to sound an awful lot like Dom’s favorite song.

“You have no idea how much I fucking  _ love _ it up here,” she sang back to Dom over her shoulder, splaying her hands along the stone ledge. “I swear to god, if they ever tell anyone we have roof access, I’m gonna throw myself off this damn thing and onto the pavement. This place is sacred, Smoothie Girl.  _ Sacred.” _

Picking up two beers from the pack, Dom crossed the roof just in time to catch the dreamy look painted in Darlene’s eyes. Dom didn’t really know what was so special about a Brooklyn rooftop identical to every other, but she liked the sentiment. Maybe she just didn’t know what it meant anymore to feel rooted in a place. That much, she admired.

Dom wordlessly picked the lighter out of the back of Darlene’s shorts and tucked the end of it beneath the cap of the bottle, popping it off, and Darlene turned back towards her with a wide smile. 

“Look at you with the cute little tricks. Ever had an interest in getting paid for that?”

Dom scoffed, popping open the second bottle and passing it back to Darlene. “You’re delusional if you think I’d ever work for you.” 

“Hey now, I could never hire you. You’re a conflict of interest.” Darlene tapped the base of her bottle against Dom’s with a cheeky smile. “Cheers.”

Dom wasn’t entirely sure what Darlene meant, but she had enough good sense to not respond. 

Barely three sips in, Darlene pulled the joint back from behind her ear, and Dom almost didn’t notice when she held it out to her.

“How about now?”

Dom stared blankly. “What?”

“You didn’t strike me as someone who likes to smoke with people around. So, I’m asking, how ‘bout now?”

She wasn’t wrong, to be fair. The last three times in Dom’s life that she’d enjoyed a high were by herself, and the last three times that it’d sent her mentally scrabbling up the walls had been when she smoked it around a crowd she didn’t know too well. This precise intuition Darlene led with, such a considerate awareness for Dom’s limits that Dom didn’t even always have, it was just as rattling as it was soothing.

“You’re here,” Dom pointed out dumbly.

“Yeah, well.” Darlene shrugged, stepping closer so as to tuck the filter into Dom’s mouth for her. “Maybe I’m not people.”

The pads of her fingers brushed against her lips, lingered.

Dom had come into the business of not answering her, but allowing Darlene to slowly lift the lighter between them was as much of an unspoken agreement — an unsaid,  _ no, you’re really not _ — as anything verbally communicated could have been.

But still, Darlene didn’t light it. Patient, waiting, eyes like the first heat of summer. 

“It’s been a few years,” Dom mumbled through the paper. 

“Yeah, no shit. You can say no, you know. I just… If you  _ wanted _ to, I just wanted to give you…” She waved to the roof around them, her words trailing off. The rambling was unexpected from Darlene, someone who had always been so witty and composed like she had a script prewritten for her. 

Dom knew what Darlene meant. She also had the creeping feeling that Darlene knew so much more than Dom wanted her to.

_ Jesus, _ it was just a joint. Dom didn’t need to make such a philosophical enterprise out of this.

“Thank you.” Dom forced her voice steady, gave her best attempt at a joking smile. “But, promise me you’ll stuff me into a closet somewhere if I start making a fool of myself?”

“Sweetie.” Darlene sidled up even closer, obscuring all the city lights behind her, and tilted her head with a mocking pout. “I’d never push you back into the closet.”

When Darlene lifted the lighter again, and Dom cupped her hands around the flame to obscure it from the breeze, Darlene’s other hand raised to wrap around hers again, warmer than the blaze.

Dom, naturally caught up in Darlene’s errant, intense stare, inhaled for a beat too long, and she ripped it from her mouth as a violent cough tore from her throat, the thick smoke kicking back towards her eyes, and Dom swiped it away as she held the thing back towards Darlene.

“Yeah,” she said thickly between coughs. “That’s the best you’re gonna get out of me.”

Darlene was already laughing with delight as she took it back. The ember hissed as she took her own pull, the sound as potent as the heat of Darlene’s smoldering gaze, and Dom didn’t know which her attention was more caught up on.

It didn’t take long for the liquid relaxation to seep into her blood.

The lukewarm beer trickled down the back of her throat like crisp, ice-cold water on a hot day, and the muggy city breeze was finer than the brush of a delicate hand across her face. She could palpably  _ feel _ the thrum of the music beneath them through the gritty concrete roof, like a heartbeat, and Darlene’s soft conversation seemed like the only thing she’d ever need to hear again, like rose petals coming to rest in her ears.

Dom was  _ so _ damn relaxed.

She sat on the ground with her back to the ledge, the beautiful skyline out of vision, and Darlene’s head was draped across her lap. At the same time that Darlene had blindly reached for Dom’s hand, Dom was already instinctually carding her fingers through the brunette’s hair, like a reflex of someone else. Her hair was a bit knotted at first, tangles of resistance, but soon the wavy strands were parting through like cool silk, mesmerizing. Every time she paused to contemplate this heavenly feeling, Darlene would reach again like a petulant child and pull her back.

“So, I told him that, yeah, that is pretty fucking gross, and walked away,” Darlene finished up her story. “And I haven’t been allowed to handle customer complaints ever since.”

Dom smiled, lazy. “I thought we were guests.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You’re all a pain in my ass, is what you are.”

Darlene had been doing most of the talking, Dom just content and loose enough to sit there and listen to whatever bar story here or adventure with her friends and brother there, and they fell now into another dip of silence.

Dom found she was just as pleased to listen to her voice as she was to sit in the quiet with her, that both conditions had perks of their own. Both were fine, good. Everything was good.

“Hey.” A hand poked at her thigh. “You doin’ okay up there?”

Dom glanced down to find Darlene’s head craned back, watching her. She nodded, and brushed a stray flake of ash from Darlene’s forehead, like touching a cloud. “Yeah.”

Darlene’s face split yet again, a smile like molasses. “Dude, you are so stoned right now. You should see your eyes.”

Rather than feel self-conscious, Dom just found herself actually  _ giggling _ in lieu of an answer.

When Darlene reached up again to catch the tips of Dom’s fingers, they tingled like Pop-Rocks. “Hey, uh.”

Time had never moved slower.

“Thanks. For coming tonight.”

Dom shrugged. “I don’t know what you’re thanking me for. You’re stuck up here babysitting me, missing out on your own party.”

“It’s hardly my party, trust me. I… I barely know any of them.”

Dom thought back to when they first walked in, the thorough greetings of the crowd, how they welcomed her like a leader. Dom frowned. “They seem like they know you.”

“Yeah.” Darlene let out a quiet, humorless laugh. “They do, don’t they?”

Her tone scratched at something darker, a realm Dom wasn’t supposed to see, one she didn’t want to. It’s not that it was a burden for her, but in that moment, there was a hardship on Darlene’s shoulders that Dom found herself wishing away. Darlene had been so expertly stroking away each of Dom’s anxieties tonight like she knew exactly what she was doing, and maybe it was all coincidental, but Dom scraped her cloudy mind for even a morsel of that kind of insight.

“Is this your roundabout way of saying I know you? Because you know how I feel about that.” Pathetic.

“Maybe not  _ know _ , but…” Darlene crossed her arms across her stomach as a breeze flickered by. “I mean, would you?”

“Would I what?”

“Want to?” Dom could feel the muscles along Darlene’s neck stiffen against her thigh, could make out the shadow of her clenched jaw. “Would you want to know me?”

Dom was way too fucking high for this.

But.

She brushed her hand back through Darlene’s hair, sifting her fingers deep across her scalp, as much for how soothing it felt across her own palm as it was to alleviate the strange tension that had come down on the bartender so suddenly. How did she even answer a question like that?

Maybe there wasn’t an answer at all. Maybe she had to stop thinking that life was organized enough to  _ have _ answers.

Darlene looked back up at her when she took too long to answer, and the pale orange glow of the Brooklyn atmosphere glinted in her eyes like tiger eye.

“I come back every week, don’t I?” Dom hoped her smile looked sincere, because it felt like plastic across her face. “I’m not exactly interested in your cocktail-making skills. Or the moldy ice.”

The laugh that bubbled from Darlene was one Dom hadn’t heard before, or maybe it just sounded different in a mindset like this. But it was cute, a startled hiccup, and her smile had a child-like amusement to it, almost goofy. Dom liked it, a lot.

“I’d never give you the moldy ice, Smoothie Girl. You know I’ll always scoop out the clean ones for you.”

What an oddly sweet sentiment. 

“Are you ever going to call me by my real name?”

“That is your real name.” Darlene looked up again. “You wanna go get food? I would fuck a cactus for some halal right now.”

✕

Dom didn’t make it home.

With her mouth caked dry like sand clogged her throat and heartburn so sharp she was nauseous with it, Dom slowly dwindled up to consciousness. She lifted her face up from the pillow shakily, blinking blearily as the room spun into focus. She was on a mattress tucked into the corner on the floor, but it wasn’t the same room she first saw last night. She didn’t recognize it in the daylight at first, but the bare memory of a dark, large box of a room she stumbled into late in the night with Darlene swept into her thoughts. 

A series of rapid clacking grew clearer from behind her, and Dom stretched her stiff neck to look to her other side.

Darlene was beside her, fingers breezing across her laptop keyboard dizzyingly fast for Dom’s sludged brain. Her hair was frizzy in the early summer humidity, loose down her bare shoulders, an old, torn tank top hanging low on her chest, and the sunlight that filtered through the window made her collarbones shine. When she noticed Dom’s stare, she smiled like this was a regular occurrence, but her typing didn’t slow in the slightest.

“Morning, babe. I bought you donuts, but you took too long to wake, up so I ate them already.”

Dom rubbed her eyes, not totally convinced she wasn’t dreaming. “Did you… sleep… here?”

“Yeah, our couch has cum stains on it, and that outweighed any chivalrous obligation, so, sorry. If it makes you feel better though, you don’t snore.”

That hadn’t really been anything she was worried about before, but the reassurance wasn’t unwanted. She dropped her head tiredly back to the pillow. As Darlene’s slowly words registered, she blinked her eyes open again. “Wait, what time is it?”

“Uh, almost three.”

Dom was fumbling out of the bed in two seconds, only to immediately trip over a lump of clothing. With a start, as the sticky air breezed across her bare legs, she realized it was her own damn jeans on the floor.

“Darlene, why aren’t I wearing pants?”

“Bitch don’t look at me, you said you were hot and took them off yourself. What was I supposed to do? Put them back on for you? I’m not your mother.”

Dom was too disoriented and hungover to be bashful, she just shook her head as she stumbled back into the pants. 

Darlene finally stopped typing, gave Dom a quizzical look. “What are you doing, anyway?”

“It’s  _ three. _ Where did I leave my shoes?”

“Yeah, but like, what are you in a rush for? It’s Saturday, and you kinda struck me as the nine-to-five weekday type.”

“I have to—”

What did she have to do?

Dom slowed until her movements came entirely to a still. Her hungover clung to her like old sweat, and there was a taste at the back of her throat that she was a little afraid to name, but her spiked heart rate began to tamper down as she realized her life had come back to the unbearably boring monotony of aimless weekends.

“I… don’t know,” she finished lamely. 

“Cool, then.” Darlene shut her laptop and pushed it to the foot of the bed, kicking back the covers. Her shorts hung terrifying low on her hips, a thick strip of tight skin visible as she trod across the mattress to stand in front of Dom. “I don’t have to work until five, and there’s an all-you-can-eat sushi place by St. Marks. Their lunch deal ends at four, so, let’s get moving. You wanna borrow my toothbrush, or something?”

Dom was tempted to ask if Darlene did anything but eat and drink, but she refrained. She shook her head, still groggy, as Darlene ruffled through a white paint-chipped dresser. “How— How are you not sick of me yet?”

“I dunno. You don’t talk all that much, and I’m pretty into everything you do say. Like, what’s there to get sick of, I guess. Why, you sick of me?”

This feeling that churned low in her gut, that’s what Dom was sick of.

She was saved from answering when Darlene pulled her shirt over her head, revealing a naked back, and Dom turned sharply away with a huff. Darlene’s laugh echoed for hours. 

✕

Trudy had what could almost be labelled as a shit-eating grin when Dom finally made it home.

Dom had stood still in the foyer, feeling like a child caught in the middle of something. “Not. One. Word.”

“So, who is she?”

“What did I just say?”

✕

“You left your bracelet at my place.”

“Oh.” Dom blinked at Darlene, watching as she stole a sip from Dom’s beer like it was her own. “Uh, can I have it back?”

A smile that once looked wicked now just reminded Dom of wine — light, midsummer rosé too dry for her throat. Dom was starting to worry about the lengths she’d go to to see a smile like that over and over again.

“Nope. You’ll have to come back for it.”

Of course Dom wanted to go back. That was exactly why she shouldn’t.

✕

Darlene was terrible at billiards. This was Dom’s favorite thing she’d learned about Darlene so far, and it included what a sore loser Darlene was. 

“Okay, you know fucking what?” Darlene fished some more crumpled twenties from her pocket, even as Angela rushed over from the bar with a bitter string of curses under her breath. “Best out of five. I’ll put another hundred on—”

“Rent is due tomorrow.” Angela slapped the cash out of Darlene’s hand, though Dom had no intention of taking any of the three hundred that already sat on the table. “You’re done, you fucking lunatic.”

For the first time, Darlene glared at Dom, but the warmth humming under Dom’s skin was becoming ever familiar, and even she could sense the endearment in Darlene’s scowl.

“I have three brothers,” Dom elaborated. She felt loose and relaxed even while sober, like she hadn’t in years. “Played a lot of pool growing up.”

“Yeah, I’ll play  _ you _ growing up.”

“And now you’re not making any sense," Angela muttered, thumbing through the mound of cash with a tight, worried knit in her brow.

Darlene and Dom’s eyes met at the same time. The laugh they shared extended far beyond this Tuesday.

✕

“So uh, what do you… like?”

Dom’s hand hung in Darlene’s lap, and Darlene was stroking her fingers feather-light across her palm. They sat on the same side of a booth at a diner on Broadway, long since finished with their picked meals. Elliot had already left, Angela was in the bathroom, they were alone.

Dom had found herself staying at Mr. Robot nearly until closing, and by that point, it wasn’t hard for Darlene to persuade her into a little longer. Dom practically persuaded herself. The 2am breakfast that followed didn’t take much, either.

Now, for the first time that night, it was just the two of them, and Darlene’s legs were stretched across Dom’s thighs, a strangely comforting weight. 

Anyone else,  _ anywhere _ else, this would bother Dom, leave her crawling out of her skin. But here, it felt invisible, indiscernible to the naked eye, like their secret in plain sight. 

What they were hiding, she didn’t know, but just was confident that it was something others weren’t privy to yet. 

Dom carefully watched the way Darlene didn’t look her in the eye. She laughed. “Sorry, what’s the question?”

“Like, I mean, what kind of stuff do you  _ like?” _

Dom watched as Darlene’s finger trailed along the lines of her palm, up the slope of each finger and back down, slow, distracting.

“Um.” This wasn’t the type of thing they usually talked about, such a pointed question with no concrete answer, not the kind it demanded. “Are you asking about my… hobbies?”

Darlene looked exhausted, but Dom just pegged it to the late hour and long shift. “No, like, what do you _ care _ about? What’s important to you?”

“Suddenly interested in philosophy, are you?”

“No. Just— in you.”

Dom hated when she did that.

“Like.” Darlene sat up in the booth, ceasing the motions across Dom’s skin and crossing her arms. If Dom didn’t know any better, she’d think she was embarrassed, self-conscious, but those were such polar ends of a dichotomy Darlene was physically capable of reaching. 

No, she was too short for that 

“Okay, so, there’s what everyone knows, you know what I mean? Where we go, what we do, the people we talk to, what fucking pictures we posted three years ago today, but… I mean, I just want to know something about you no one else knows. Like, what’s the first thing you notice in somebody? 

“Not much a fan of social media, are you?”

Darlene’s nostrils flared, and in an exasperated tone that she had previously only used with Angela and Elliot, she asked, “Can you just humor me for five fucking minutes and take me seriously? Just this once?”

She could take the harsh tone as meaning that she, too, was a part of Darlene’s life, as much as Elliot and Angela were, that she was a regular in her routine and not just her bar. But it seemed hell of a lot more likely that Darlene was just starting to see how Dom blended in with the societal stereotype of people who weren’t worth the time or effort, and her skin prickled like ice.

“I think… what no one else knows about me is that there’s nothing else to know.” Dom let out a nervous laugh, wishing Angela would hurry back.. “Anyone that’s ever stuck around was just waiting for this magic moment that my true colors would come out, and I was always too scared to tell them that… what you see is what you get. I think I’m still waiting for you to work that one out.” 

Darlene’s frown was sharp like a blade, like Dom had insulted something far more personal. “I’ve learned something new about you every time I see you, nothing that I could get from… from this stupid  _ surface _ everyone else sees. And, like, even if you didn’t, no one ever said you have to entertain anyone. You don’t have to be interesting in some deep introspective fucking way for me to be interested in you.”

Dom wanted to leave. Now.

But curiosity could be far stronger an enemy than insecurity. “What’ve you learned, then?”

“That you’re goddamn stubborn, and just, not in any way I thought you’d be.” Her hand sought out Dom’s again, her fingers wrapping around hers like a vice, like a dream from yesterday, like she needed it more than Dom did. 

Dom’s throat was drier than the Jersey summer heat.

“If I gave you even half a reason to, you’d never come back. If I say one wrong thing, that’s it.”

The idea was nice, but Darlene thought her a lot more noble than she felt. Dom was weak, submissive. She wasn’t sure there was anything Darlene could do for her to leave. Every time she promised herself this was the last time, that she was done with this strange game they’ve been playing, she always came back. 

“I’ve just learned you don’t settle for shit you don’t want in your life.”

_ I want you, _ Dom wanted to say. The crisp, clear thought took a harsher toll than Dom expected, it snapped her spine like whiplash, rattled her ribcage.

Angela came back, and Darlene pulled her legs off her lap.

“I changed my mind, you guys in the mood for pie?”

✕

When Dom walked through the door, Darlene was shoving her brother back against the bar.

_ “Fuck _ you, Elliot.” 

For someone so small, she packed one hell of a punch.

Dom was early, it was just after five, so no one else was around yet, aside from the usual four. Elliot’s eyes immediately found Dom’s over Darlene’s shoulder as the bell of the door chimed behind her, and his mouth fell into a stiff, flat line. 

He looked immediately back to Darlene, and he said something to Darlene that Dom couldn’t hear. 

Darlene spun around, eyes manic, but they dampened upon seeing her. Dom, hovering still by the door, gave an awkward wave. They were all looking at her now, Angela included, and she had half a mind to just walk out and come back later. Or not at all.

Darlene turned back to Elliot, holding out a trembling finger to him. “I took fucking care of it—”

“This probably isn’t the best place for this discussion,” Angela interjected feebly, wringing a bar rag in her hands.

“—so a goddamn thank you would’ve been nice.”

Elliot was an impossible read as he turned away with a stiff jaw, but when Darlene came heading towards the door, her expression was wild with raging anxiety spidering across her face, tendrils of it like blood. She hardly looked at Dom as she passed, and the version of Darlene that dragged Dom along to whatever adventure was scheduled for the evening, the version Dom had come to know and rely on, was gone out the door. She was left only with Angela staring at her mutely, her face also unreadable, and a suspended moment where Dom had a choice to make.

The choice had never been hers to make before, not really. Darlene always made it so easy for her, painted rejection as such a more difficult choice than simply giving in.

Dom pushed out the door and rushed after Darlene, who was stomping off down the sidewalk, shaking her hands out like they were volatile. Dom caught her elbow. “Hey, hold on—”

_ “Don’t _ fucking touch me.”

Upon seeing it was Dom, her recoil subdued, but she still wrung herself from Dom’s grip. Her lips quivered like she was struggling to keep something in, and she rushed on down the street as if Dom hadn’t interrupted her at all.

Yeah, fine, Dom knew she should probably leave well enough alone, but. She jogged after her again “Darlene, please just— just wait.”

“I can’t do this right now.”

“I know, but we don’t have to—”

“What?” she snapped, halting in her tracks abruptly, but her tone grew quieter with each word, descended further into a cracked, high-pitched fragility. “What do you want? What the fuck do you want from me?”

Dom’s answer was almost immediate. “Nothing,” she breathed. “I just… I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Why? Why should you give two shits about me? What the hell have I ever done for you?”

Darlene stormed off again before Dom could answer, before the words could magically come to the surface and Dom could figure out the right thing to say. 

But it’s like Darlene said — Dom was sure damn stubborn.

“You made me stop thinking everything is so transactional,” Dom called after her, and Darlene stopped, the late-day rush of New Yorkers weaving around her like she’s just a pole in the cement ground. “That there doesn’t have to be a reason for everything someone does. For everything I do. That things can just… be. That you and I can just exist together, that we don’t have to have something in common, and there doesn’t have to be some reason for it other than we just both choose to.”

Darlene twisted around slowly, and she stared at Dom eerily like the orange street lights weighing on their shoulders. She stared like the end of a beginning neither of them asked for, one Dom found herself happy to move beyond.

Darlene’s eyes were bloodshot, the corners of her eyes pink as if she’d been crying, but she was no longer torn with anxiety. Her face was still as she approached Dom, mouth slightly parted.

She stepped close enough until Dom could smell her breath. No cigarettes this time, just the sharp mint of mouthwash. Dom was terrified for a moment that she might— 

“Do you like Jolly Ranchers?”

Dom blinked. “Do I what?”

“Applebee’s has this drink, it’s like, a Jolly Rancher in a cup. And I mean, they’re a dollar, so.”

It was that simple. It always was with them.

The nearest one was in Times Square. Darlene bit her nails on the subway, but she had her fingers on her opposite hand hooked through Dom’s belt loops as Dom held onto the pole. They stood close enough that Darlene frequently bumped into her, was practically pressed against her front, her hair tickling Dom’s chin. Dom didn’t know who was anchoring who down, but she wasn’t sure it mattered.

At the restaurant, surrounded by tourists, they sat at a high-top table in the bar. Darlene took a seat again on the same side as Dom, had her legs kicked up in her lap in a way that was becoming a signature of their nights out. It was okay. They were warm across her thighs, always served as a reminder that this was real, one she never knew she needed. 

Per Darlene’s request, two sides of mozzarella sticks and an order of shrimp tacos, along with two of those horrendous Jolly Rancher concoctions, eventually made it to the table. Dom was more than a fan of sucker sweets and candy, but the liquid cough syrup was enough to make her gag, and Darlene ended up finishing hers off for her. A tall pint of beer soon replaced it in Dom’s hand.

They didn’t talk about much, but they never did. Not really. Fifteen minutes in of Darlene’s stony quiet and chilled demeanor, fifteen minutes of Dom making terrible jokes about chain restaurants — “I used to eat at Applebee’s, but then I got enough money to buy a microwave,” — and cringey commentary on the tourists that surrounded them, Darlene started laughing again. She was smiling, she let go of whatever it was that lingered back at Mr. Robot and with Elliot, and she stayed with Dom. She didn’t leave. They talked about the state governor, about the rising MTA fares, about gardenias and about the best bagels in Jersey City. They talked about anything about each other, and somehow that did more to make Darlene familiar than anything else could.

They were waiting for the check, Darlene four Jolly Ranchers in and Dom about two beers, when Darlene’s hand slid over her thigh.

_ Far _ too close. Like, to — you know.

Dom’s knee snapped harshly against the bottom of the table, rattling the glassware, and Darlene just laughed, but Dom’s face was drained of humor.

“What was that?”

Darlene smiled, a hand brushed back along the nape of her neck. “It’s cool.”

But Dom shrugged her off, her skin aflame. “No— no, it’s— I don't know.” 

Darlene looked more confused than anything else, not a glimpse of embarrassment in sight, her eyes glittering like they were the only ones around. But, slowly, they softened. “Is it not? I'm sorry, did I read this wrong?”

Is it not? Is it not?  _ Did she read this wrong? _

The question echoed like the distant clatter of dishware and glasses, like the static of the fluorescent light hanging over their heads. Dom could only imagine the deer-in-headlights look that flared in her eyes as Darlene slowly leaned in ever so closer again, her eyes so dizzyingly near that they began to cross. Dom could practically taste her sugary sweet breath, and—

“Darlene.” Dom pushed her back again. “Seriously.”

_ “Alright,” _ Darlene drawled, licking her lips, her hand falling away from Dom’s neck. “Fine. I’m sorry. It’s just… I like you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...”

Dom’s chest pounded, thundered. “You’re drunk.”

Darlene gave her a tilted, patronizing pout. “Come on, at least give me more credit than that.”

“We’re in public.”

Darlene raised an eyebrow, clean, and oh Jesus H, something  _ throbbed _ low in Dom’s gut at that cruel, damning smile. “That can be fixed, you know.”

✕

So. This is how they’re here. This is how Dom’s pressed back against the grimy bathroom stall, how Darlene’s tongue is licking a sinful trail along the corner of Dom’s jaw in such a slow, dragging way that sends sharp jolts down her spine with each move.

There wasn’t some specific turning point. Dom doesn’t know if it was always building like a crescendo to this moment, or if something changed somewhere along the way. She doesn’t know what the  _ beginning  _ is. Was it the breakup? Could it have been meeting The Ex, without whom Dom never would’ve found Mr. Robot? Was it the day she decided to go to law school? Is this something that was to be built up to at all, or is it a mistake? Not something meant to be, but just a mistake in fate?

Dom never knew a mistake could feel this fucking good.

Darlene’s lips drag back up to hers, her breath hot and gasping into Dom’s mouth. Such a simple interaction, the exchange of air, but it spins Dom’s head in circles endlessly, makes her want to thud her head back against the stall, to savor this stupid, chaotic damn moment she’s going to regret the second it’s over.

A thigh slips between her legs just as the echo of a door opening interrupts them, and Dom freezes. 

Darlene doesn’t share the same reservations. Her hands tangle deeper into Dom’s hair, her nails scraping along the base of Dom’s neck, but her kisses do finally slow, and her lips spread into a teasing smile like she can hear Dom’s pounding heartbeat. 

Someone enters the stall next to theirs, and all Dom can be conscious of is how Dalene’s slim body is folded with hers, how their chests are pressed so firmly together, how Darlene’s hands tangle around her, how the fucking heat in her gut only burns hotter the longer Darlene’s leg stays between them.

Darlene’s face is blurry, cross-eyed as Dom looks down on it, but she cranes her neck back just slightly to meet her eye. Darlene looks at her with such doting wonder, such a glistening fascination, that Dom’s knees wobble threateningly. A stare like that cremates her nerves, and Darlene smiles like Dom has given her something far beyond this accident of harmony.

Her hand traces from the back of her neck along her jawline until a thumb finally loops around to drag over Dom’s bottom lip. Dom can only watch Darlene’s acute focus on her lips, mesmerized.

“I can’t ask,” Dom whispers, sensitive and shaking under this rare fog of exposure, this vulnerability she’s been so careful to not let show. “I need you to ask me.”

Darlene merely dipped her thumb past her laps, grazed it across her teeth. “Ask what?”

Dom only gave the barest shake of her head, blood racing in her ears. 

She’s still not really sure how Darlene gets it, how it comes to her, how she understands exactly what it Dom needs from her. But she does. She just— she does.

Darlene’s hand brushes back, cradles her cheek, gaze soft like honey and glaze. “Come back to mine?”

There was never another choice.

✕

The first time Dom wakes up, it’s far too early. The stream of sunlight from the window is still tangerine and thick, sluggish like the close sunrise morning. The sticky humidity is kept at bay with the morning hour, and being curled around Darlene’s backside isn’t yet unbearable. She has an arm loose over Darlene’s hip, and Darlene’s hand is lazily draped atop hers, her chest hardly moving with her faint sleeping breath. She’s deliciously warm against her, not quiet like the taste of home or Trudy’s blueberry muffins, and not even some kind of imagined safety, but rather just… a compatible correspondence. The satisfaction of order, when two things fit together so cleanly and there’s no need to consider another way. 

Dom falls back asleep with the taste of the sun on her tongue.

✕

The second time she wakes up is to the shattering of glass, quickly followed by overlapping shouts.

It yanks her from her half-in, half-out, dreamless slumber, spins the room into a bleary focus far quicker than it should. The soreness in her abdomen and arms is more stiff than anything else, and Dom has half a mind to mind her own business and stay in bed. For all she knows, it’s Elliot or Angela dealing with their own issues, and Darlene is probably still in—

Dom’s hand pats blindly across an empty bed, and she sighs.

It’s still early, not even eight yet.

Considering the explosion of Darlene’s clothes strewn all across the room, it’s more effort than it’s worth to try and pick around and find her own, so Dom peels a Metallica tee off the floor and stumbles into a pair of board-shorts. 

Again, she knows it’s none of her business, and there’s a four-alarm fire clanging in the back of her head that she should just stay in Darlene’s bedroom and mind her own shit, but — she’s still half-asleep, not yet awake enough to feel embarrassed for how she just wants to drag Darlene back to bed and drift around in the heat for another hour until she has to leave for work.

“That wasn’t mine for you to take,” a male voice Dom doesn’t recognize is shouting as she pads out barefoot into the hall. “You want to steal from me, fine, but that shit wasn’t  _ mine, _ and now they think I’m the one who took it.”

“I didn’t steal shit from you.” Darlene, but her tone is dark, thickly clouded like a storm. “And I don’t need your piss-off paycheck either.”

“I don’t care what you did with it, but you need to put that shit back, Darlene. They think it was  _ me. _ ”

Before Dom can think twice about revealing herself, she comes into view, and the buzz-cut man catches sight of her before Darlene does. His dumbfounded eyes must tip Darlene off, because all to soon they both are looking at her. But, tapping in on a stable confidence Dom has never had, she holds her chin level and strong.

“Who are you?”

“I’m her boyfriend.”

_ “Ex- _ boyfriend,” Darlene interjects sharply.

The man laughs, a cynical, dry thing. “Was I ever even that? Was I ever anything to you but a way in?”

Dom didn’t really know what the question was, but Darlene’s silence was an answer she could understand, and the man’s mouth twisted in a sour grimace. 

He turns now to Dom sharply, and the ceiling lights catch the shine of his glossy eyes. “I’d say you should turn off your bluetooth and change all your passwords, but she’s probably already copped everything she needs from you by now. You should know you’re not special. This is just what she does.”

Dom doesn’t have the slightest damn clue what he’s talking about, but Darlene shoves at him with an aggravated shout, her voice splintering. “Get out,” she snaps, pounding on his shoulders. “Get the fuck out of here, Cisco.”

It’s all over so fast, as quickly as it’d come, and Dom is still rubbing the sand from her eyes. She’s not an idiot, she knows there’s something dangerous here, and a shiver of tension creeps up her shoulders and neck, but it’s nothing like the usual anxiety. This is not her paranoia.

Darlene slams the door shut, hands pressed against it, her sigh loud enough to fill the entire hall.

Dom’s always been too curious for her own good. Trudy always said that. For once, maybe, just maybe, it’s meant to work in her best favor. 

What Dom can’t understand is the reason for why such an icy vice grips so mercilessly around her chest.

“What’s he talking about?” 

Darlene just remains still, hands against the door, back to Dom, and her head dips low to her chest.

“What the hell’s he talking about?”

When the brunette straightens out and wipes a hand tiredly down her face, the look she levels Dom with is chilling. It’s hollow, pale, sinister. “He just… he works for some people who had some money that didn’t belong to them, and I… I took it back.”

“You just… took it.”

“Yes.” 

A tremor throbs along Dom’s stiff jaw. “How?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Darlene pushes away from the door now, is quick to come up to Dom before she can stop her. Her hand grazes up along Dom’s neck in a mirror of last night. The bare touch is a perfect replica of the hours in twisted sheets, of flesh and desire, and it’s almost enough for Dom to melt into and forget this strange interaction altogether. 

But.

Dom steps out of her touch. “Darlene, what did you do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know how many of you follow me on twitter, but i set up a p/atreon and all proceeds go to blm causes if you'd like to support. i mostly write for suprecorp but i plan to write more domlene one-shots in the future (even after i finish this) so check me out @vellanille if you're interested please and i'll be posting spoilers/content for domlene on my p/atreon as well as accepting prompts for the higher-tier subscribers

**Author's Note:**

> comments are my main source of protein
> 
> i'm @vellanille on twitter hmu


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